Tales from the Body Box - Peter Stone Trotting Drafter

This episode of 'Tales from the Body Box' features a horse who's been in that not-quite-literally-a-box storage space for a very, very long time!

My Stablemate bodies are kept in an actual cardboard box, but the few big models I bought while under the impression I'd ever dare handle painting something massive, are hidden behind the tv. Not quite as strange as it sounds - my tv isn't one of those modern ones which hang on a wall, it has to stand on a little unit of it's own, and cos I've got it pushed diagonally into the corner of the room, there's a triangular bit of dead space back there, for the wires, and the daddylonglegs spiders, and the dust, and the horses I'm putting off even THINKING about maybe painting one day!

Most of them have been in there for over a decade, that's how much I procrastinate when it comes to painting big models. I'm not quite sure which year I bought the horse in question, but he was released in 2002, and I checked out old photos and I definitely already had him in 2006.

He was a duplicate in my collection, a Peter Stone mid year release called Romi-o, bought extremely cheap as a damaged 'second' in the sale with a snapped-off bow from his mane, some serious paint scuffing on his rump and shoulder, as well as rubs to his ears and nostrils : one very beaten-up looking horse, who had been a lovely colour but wasn't nice enough to keep Original Finish any more.

And because I already had one of him (and the matching mare Juliet), I had a plan in mind for this boy - rather than just attempting invisible fixes to fill in the paint loss and replace the broken bow. Instead, I'd give him new white markings, extended and elaborated from the original shapes to cover every little scuff and scratch, and take off all the rest of the plastic bows to give him more realistic little ribbon ones instead. With a new sculpted tail, he could even return to his breeds' roots and become a Scottish Clydesdale rather than an American one (tail docking has been illegal in Britain since the 1920s).

Only it never happened.

All that time passed, and the poor horse sat behind the tv, gathering a coating of dust, mostly forgotten apart from the occasional times I'd remember I used to buy big horses and then not feel up to painting them.

Last week, I happened to lean over the tv to wriggle a wire cos the signal was being weird, and saw this horse again. Ok, he was still as big as I remembered, and I'm still not any good at painting wide expanses of smooth plastic with my little brushes and sticky paint and shaky hands, but... that one doesn't need much painting? Just the white, right? So I picked him up, wiped off all the dust and bits of dead fly, and had a look at him. Sure, I'd forgotten about the ear rubs, but those were even easier than the markings, cos it's just running a line of black along the edges. And it wouldn't take too long to cut off the old bows, and give him that new tail I'd thought of at the time. Then, at least, there'd be ONE less horse in waiting behind the tv, and I'd feel like I'd worked a little bit on this ongoing problem of not being able to deal with the big models back there.

Stupidly, I forgot all about taking a 'before' photo, but here's one from the internet!

And here he is, after his partial makeover!

All the body colour paint is original, I didn't even try to alter or restore it - every bit of damage on him is hidden with the white markings, the the hair-by-hair ticking, the new pink and grey skin of the muzzle, and the little bit of black on the edges of his ears. It as that lovely rich and dappled bay colour which made me buy him in the first place, knowing I'd be keeping that no matter what else I did around it.

He looked a bit weird with his mane and tail all plaited up, trotting along, but with no halter or bridle on - a horse would only have the braid and flights done for showing, and he'd always have tack on at the same time, so I decided I just HAD to make him a bridle too. I had a look back through some pictures of the Clydesdale classes at a local heavy horse show I went to last month, to make sure I was getting it correct and within the turnout rules. Geldings all wear a bridle with a bit, it doesn't always have a noseband but often does just cos that's a good place to put more decoration in the form of metal bosses, studs, or coloured patent leather to match the owner's colours seen in the mane bows and tail braid. The cheeks also have this little inset of co-ordinated colour, and many of the browbands too. So I got out my fake leather and some glossy red card from a biscuit box, and then he was all dressed up for the show ring, and not looking like he'd somehow got loose and run away without his halter on!

The bridle in closeup - I might replace the gold paint on the buckle keepers with actual gold foil strips, once I've got hold of some stickier superglue - the one I was using was awful and everything fell apart and had to be re-stuck multiple times!

And here's a full view, all finished!

The back view, showing the new tail. It might look odd, but this is how their tails are treated for showing (which is itself linked back to the working days, when a flowing loose tail would be a risk for getting caught up in harness or machinery). The lower two thirds are clipped to remove the long hair, leaving just the fleshy tail with a spiky stubble, while the upper third is left to grow long, braided, rolled back on itself, then secured with ribbons, like a little bun. When the horse isn't in the show ring, the tail then has enough hair to hang down, working naturally as a fly whisk and to be used in normal body language when interacting with other horses. Much better than docking!

Another angle, I'm really happy with how his new face marking came out, especially the pinking of the nose with little uneven patches of dark colour to give him some individuality.

I haven't named him yet but I'm really pleased to have finally got him completed, after all this time leaving him waiting. I did think 'Patience' would be a good name for that reason, but it sounds more like a mare, so I need to have a rethink. Just mustn't make him wait quite so long for his name as for his paint!

A Breyer parcel from Germany - Zorah Belle, and some 2023 Stablemates

UK Breyer collectors recently received the bad news that this year's models wouldn't be coming in June as expected - the company which used to import and distribute them emailed all the sellers to say their orders were cancelled and no stock was coming.

It's possible another import company will take on the brand in future, but right now all British Breyer fans are left with the choice of patiently waiting in hope they eventually end up on the market here again, or ordering in from overseas.

I decided that I just couldn't wait and risk missing out on the must-have model from this year's releases, the Fjord I absolutely HAD to add to my collection after many years of being a fan of the breed, and much excitement back when they announced we were getting a regular run on this gorgeous new mould!
And if I was ordering that horse, it was the ideal time to get some WIA models I'd had on my wishlist too - I gave them a post to themselves, here. And then I may as well put the 2023 Stablemates on the order as well, cos they might never reach this country directly either (or be as elusive and fleetingly in stock as the last batch were!), so in the end I had a nice big parcel on the way from Germany.

By the way, if anyone else in the UK is considering buying from overseas during this time of Breyer drought and uncertainty, I can happily recommend Modellpferdeversand as an option. They're amazingly quick and efficient, I've been buying my WIA models from there for a while now and in my experience parcels arrive almost as quickly as ones bought from companies over here (maybe one day longer, for the extra sorting and travel which happens between the ports)

There's no customs and import fees like we get hit with if buying from the USA, and postage is €11, dropping to just €5 if you spend over a certain amount, so it's not excessive.
The site works in English, and Paypal automatically converts currency for you when you go through the checkout, so no need to worry about how to pay in Euros.
And be aware that the prices you see on the website will CHANGE after you log in - something to do with VAT tax rates, we pay less per model than other countries. For example, my Traditional scale buy is marked up at €49.65 on the site, but drops to €41.72 if I log in with my UK-addressed account.

Ok, so international buying option thoroughly covered, here's what was in my parcel!

The NORWEGIAN FJORD! Hurrah! As I said, I wanted this one so badly from the moment I saw it, out of all this year's new models this was the one which jumped out, and I'm so glad to have managed to get hold of her.

She's a portrait model of a real mare, Sweetwater's Zorah Belle, who's been successful at sport driving in the USA. The photo on the box shows her with a clipped off coat, but the model hasn't been given the paler body and 'edge' lines where the clip ends, so this must be her natural unclipped summer-coated look. I've called mine Harecroft Astrilde, after a Norse goddess (using an alternate variation of the name, because Breyer used the more common 'Astrid' for another Fjord release!)

Her colour's nicely chosen, not too bright and orangey, but not too pale and wishy-washy either, and the dark points are done well, with the black down the middle of the mane and a straight neat dorsal stripe, the shading on her legs is especially subtle, and the black nostrils faded gently into a pale nose are just right!

Breyer packaged her facing this way in the box, but I prefer how she looks from the other side - a combination of the leg position looking more balanced, and the ear being visible rather than swamped in her forelock!

She's a nice sculpt, a good representation of the modern breed, which is slightly lighter and more like a native riding pony type, than the small-draft-horse ancestry they come from.

I wonder what other colour Fjords we might see in future, I doubt we'll ever have a regular run grey dun (grulla) because they used that for a Breyerfest special, and that only leaves a couple of other shades even found in the breed. Perhaps they'll just use the alternate untrimmed mane version of the mould to bring out other breeds on this sculpt.

Now, on to the Stablemates!

This is the Darley mould, sculpted as an Arabian but so much the American show-ring type, with the long-limbed action both high-stepping AND stretched, that it doesn't resemble the old-world Arabian as I know it. So I show all mine as the National Show Horse breed, created as a cross between the Arabian and the Saddlebred for exhibitors who wanted something part way between the two, flamboyant movement combined with Arabian posture and prettiness. I think this mould does a great job of that!

This is my third Darley, and the first one to have serious balance problems. He just did not stand up, straight out of the packaging, and even after the hot water treatment he's leaning very much to one side - I had to tilt the fake grass base at quite an angle to keep him upright for a photo, and now he's standing with a thick coin under his front foot to level him up on the shelf.

The black paintjob is plain but the perfect point between matte and glossy, so it looks like the sheen on a clean and healthy horse coat, rather than too plasticky. I wish the sock had masking rather than that fade-out (leaving it off entirely would've been more realistic than such a blurry edge!) but the face marking is nice enough.

Next out of the box was this Quarter Horse on the mini Smart Chic Olena mould. And guess what - he didn't stand up either. The standing front leg is shorter than the others, meaning he dramatically lurches to one side every time you try to let go of him, and ends up flat on the ground. Great, that's two out of the packaging, and two out of two don't stand up?! Where is Breyer's quality control these days?
I couldn't do much with the hot water, pushing the foreleg slightly outwards while trying to adjust the horse's stance and balance by bending the opposite hindleg up bit to lift that foot and let him lean back in the right direction, but even after all that I still had to use a tilted base board, a small bit of grit from the path under his front foot, AND take my photo really quickly before a breath of breeze had him falling on his face for the hundredth time, hah. Like the black horse before him, he's currently got a coin under his foot, and is going to have to keep it when he moves to his final display position on the shelf later on.

Aside from his inability to stand up, the model is actually really nice - a light and bright colour with plenty of variation in shade given by the thickness of paint application, and chestnut is perfect for the breed. The mould is named after real stallion Smart Chic Olena, and many of his offspring and later descendants are the same colour, I've met some of them at a stud over here, and every one was chestnut in one shade or another!

Now, one which stands just fine on her own four feet! It's quite funny cos this mould has been released in solid chestnut, chestnut roan, and now a chestnut based appaloosa with roaning, so it's like they add a little bit more detail each time they want a regular run colour!

The spots are done by hand, with deliberate placement rather than random paint-spatter, and while this means they look less like, well, spattered paint, they do look amusing from above, where you can clearly see the painter had got a method going - four symmetrical and evenly spaced big spots, then a series of equally symmetrical and evenly spaced small ones to fit around them. From the side, it doesn't look so mathematical!

One of the older moulds in this batch, the Stock Horse Mare dates back to when Stablemates were still released in generations, she's a G3 sculpt, which were all done by the same artist (who also did the very best era of Safari horses!), and have distinctive chiselled faces as well as chunky legs with big joints and feet. A little too chunky for the Appaloosa breed, so I show my spotted ones on this mould as Colorado Ranger Horse instead.

Annnd another one whose sculpt doesn't match his official breed, but at least he does stand up, hah! This one's sold as a Clydesdale, but they're a tall, rangy and rather narrow heavy horse, quite athletic and leggy for a draft, not bulky little balls of muscle like this chap! I remember discussing the exact same model with another collector, and I think my eventual best guesses for a more accurate breed were the Breton (which is more famously chestnut, but does come in bay), and the Rhenish German Coldblood, which is suddenly a popular breed allocation in the hobby thanks to Breyer bringing one out for Breyerfest the other year! I haven't decided which yet, so I don't know if I need to name him in German or French!

This one stands up! And looks like the breed it's meant to be! Hurrah!
The colour's nicely done, a deep and rich shade of palomino with the true white mane and tail done with neat masking. I especially like the fine zig zag at the end of the mane where the edge has to interpret where the sculpted detail blends into the coat, but does it without looking blocky or misaligned. The shading on the face is also nicely done, sometimes palominos don't get given the dark noses they need to reflect the fact they have dark skin which shows wherever the coat is very fine.

he final single horse in this year's batch, the mustang, in grey pinto. The little flash of white is quite small, I'd maybe have preferred to see a bit more across the body or neck of the horse just for the sake of being more striking to look at, but he's not at all bad, a perfectly good colour for the breed, and the sculpt is dramatic and energetic - and yes, it stands up!

I've tweaked his breed from just 'Mustang' to Spanish Mustang, because this mould was originally released as an Andalusian, so even in a mustang colour, it carries all the conformation of the Spanish ancestors and can join my website's page of that breed instead.

As well as the individual horses packed on cards, this year saw the release of another 4-piece set. This time, rather than being grouped by breed type or colour/pattern, the theme is 'Poetry in Motion', which is a bit vague - I suppose the link is that all the moulds are moving rather than standing?

One of my favourites, despite not normally being overly keen on the mould (all that mane and tail is a bit too much for my taste!), the colour just works here. Morgans can be roan, and I like the application of the white spray, so fine it captures the speckly look you see if you inspect a roan coat up close, but from a distance it blends into smooth pale colour. They also remembered to leave the darker head, and if you look at the very end of his nose, he's got a hint of more gingery shading there, like a lot of bays have in real life.

Here's a sculpt which wasn't released as any official breed - she's known as the Running Mare! In this set, she's described as a Mustang, which...is ok, I suppose? It's a very middling sort of mould, no strong conformational traits in any direction, quite shallow through the body with barely any withers, and a small angular rump. I've got one other, which I allocated as a Brumby, another feral breed without selective breeding to improve type or maintain good conformation, so I'll put this one as a Brumby as well, just so I'm keeping two of a mould together rather than cos I think she can't stay what she was sold as.

Another one I was keen to get, this was my deciding factor on whether or not I really needed that set on my order! As I said on the previous page, I've been collecting this G2 Warmblood mould specifically for a really long time now, so any regular runs jump out as something I really ought to tick off the wishlist, even though I know I can't get EVERY release on a mould these days, with too many inaccessible exclusives out there.

This stallion is the colour known as dunskin, what happens when a buckskin horse also gets the dun gene. A lovely creamy pale shade, with frosting along the mane and at the top of the tail, and barring on the legs - an impressive level of detail to bother with for a regular run! Sold as an American Warmblood, where there's a lot more variety in the colours than the majority of older European warmbloods, so I'm happy with keeping that as his breed allocation.

The final one from the Poetry In Motion set, and it's the Stablemates portrait of Valegro in grey. We've already had the mould in fleabitten grey with dark points, fairly recently, so I'm surprised they've gone for another so soon, but then they've also done him in dark bay more than once, so I don't think they worry too much about repeating colours! These are supposed to be dapples, but I always think they look more like heavy Tetrarch/Chubari spotting.

He's got a handsome head, and (apart from the tiny feet!) it's a nice well observed little mould, capturing the dressage movement where the horse trots as close to on-the-spot as possible - you can see the concentration on his face.

By this point I was pretty close to reaching the half price postage point, so I thought ok, I'll add another little horse, and had a look back through the Stablemates section, thinking I'd probably put in a duplicate of one of the 2023 singles, whichever I've painted least of already. But in amongst them was a 2021 model I didn't have, one of the blind bag releases which I'm pretty sure was only sold in the USA? I can't find that info on Identify Your Breyer, but as a US-based site they probably wouldn't realise that not all countries got all those Stablemates, and didn't know it was a thing which needed noting!

Here he is, one more of those missing G2 Warmbloods to tick off! I don't know if he was ever sold as a certain breed, or even whether his colour's intended as a very light bay or a golden buckskin, but either way he's a handsome addition, and I'm pleased I spotted him when I was compiling my order!

But I looked across at the total, and oh, it was still a tiny bit below the cut-off point for half price postage - for the sake of spending about 30p more, I'd save myself €5, so I HAD to go back and choose one : it was practically a free horse! I decided to stick on one of the 'Handful of Horses' blind bags, I still haven't managed to get the Icelandic from that set, so there was a one in six chance I'd end up with the one I wanted, and if not then I'd be happy enough with a duplicate to repaint.

So I left that til last, when unpacking my parcel, a random surprise which would either be the Icelandic, or one for the body box...right?

Wrong - as soon as I split the packet I knew I'd got something totally different after all, the silver foil inside was reflecting BRIGHT blue, and out came the one-in-96 'chase' piece!

I don't actively collect decorators, but I do find it amusing when the cool colours come to me by chance - especially as this was such a last minute 'oh I'll have a blind bag' moment just to push the order up by a few pence, I very nearly didn't ever own this horse, and now I do, so I'm quite happy for him to have a shelf space, and can appreciate him for the perfectly mad and visually striking little thing that he is! The metallic blue is very vibrant and more my taste than neon pink or multicolour or see-through-and-glittery, I think in general the 'filigree' pattern is one of the most tasteful designs used for decorator releases. And the other one I got from a previous set of blind bags was similar (the copper filigree Django) so at least he'll have someone to stand with on display!

WIA Arabians

Here's the next bit of the parcel I received earlier this month - a new WIA model released last year, an Arabian mare in a choice of two colours, chestnut and bloody-shouldered grey. I gave them a post of their own, thanks to the way my blog is organised by tagging brands, types, and scales - for reasons of tidiness, the WIA models are best kept separate from the Breyer ones!

This is the first time I've seen any work by the sculpting artist, who goes by HorRaw Studios. As with the Erren sculpt from earlier this year, I can see the difference in art style and detailing from the initial four WIA models by Eberl, but as a whole they work well together, these mares don't stand out as a bad fit with the older models - even though you could pick out which ones are by someone else, they still look like they belong.

I admit I'm surprised the company have gone for another Arabian horse, so soon! With such a small range, you'd think they'd be more keen on developing a good spread of breed types, so having ticked off Draft, Arabian, Andalusian, Warmblood and Criollo, I was predicting the next choice would an American stock or gaited horse, or a native pony, not a repeat on one of the few breeds they've got already!

The grey is interesting, because her shoulder patch is created with a stencilled solid outline, speckled over the top with random spatters for more detail. This means all the individuals of this model will be slightly different, depending on how the paint spots spread out as it's flicked on. The softer speckling over the rest of the body is unique to each model, too, but stands out less - I think it's under the sprayed white coat, so it's very nicely blended in - a really lovely effect!

Oh what a face! Everyone who's known a mare has probably been on the receiving end of those ears a time or two!

The chestnut's paintwork is less complex but still effective, with a nice rich brown base and just enough shading to avoid it looking flat. And her white markings are flashy and realistically designed.

The beautiful flowing mane on the other side. As with the Erren release from last year, the different sculptor doesn't mean the WIA models don't match well as an entire range, the style is slightly different but the general feel is the same, lean elegant models with great proportions and slim legs, detail without over-crisp texturing, and plenty of expression and character in the face and the pose.

Second-hand horses for my herd, two little and one large

These actually arrived some time ago, but I only just realised I hadn't updated the blog to introduce them, and they need to be listed before the more recent ones, so you're getting three posts from me today - oops!

A long time ago, I collected every release on this mould. I didn't really intend to - just like with the G2 Appaloosa and G2 saddlebred, at some point I noticed I had a LOT of them and that made me start looking for the colours I didn't have, and it became one of those 'conga line' moulds where I tried to get as many as I could. One which always eluded me was the bay with diagonally opposite white feet - I had four other solid bays, but not this one! He was part of a limited edition set only sold by JCPenney and only in the USA, so very few made it over here to start with, and I never saw him come up for sale second hand. I stopped doing my conga-lines of every release when Breyer brought in the expensive club specials and more unattainable releases. But when I saw this model which had been on my wishlist for all that time ages ago, I just had to get him after all!

The same seller had this Thoroughbred from the same 2006 special run, and while it's not a mould I ever sought a complete set of, I thought it looked really good in this pretty pale grey colour - unlike a lot of Breyer greys, the paint isn't just speckles and shading over bare plastic, but has a base coat of shaded grey for the body colour too - you can see where the white socks end with a crisp masked line.

The other recent arrival is a much bigger boy - a Traditional scale draft horse!

You might not recognise him at first glance, as in Breyer's catalogue photo he was mostly covered up in unrealistic decorative trappings - here's how he looked in the promo images and in the boxes of models on display.

I don't usually buy the Holiday Horse sets, partly because I don't celebrate any of the holidays they're aimed at, so I don't appreciate the decorations, but mostly because the models inside the costumes are usually given pearly or metallic paintjobs, aimed at making them look prettier and more ornamental when used for their intended purpose. But I only like matte finish models in real-horse colours, so the Holiday special runs are usually something I look at once when the releases are announced, then never think of again!
But every now and then, they do one where the horse is a normal, plain colour, without any fancy paint finishes, and I think 'Oh, I'd have liked that one!'....and STILL don't buy it, cos they're too expensive compared to a normal regular run - I can't justify paying that much extra for the costume and props I'd never use.

So when those real-colour horses come up for sale second hand, at a bargain price - and even better, without all the stuff! - that's when I jump at the change to have them for my collection after all!

Without all the extras, you can see what a handsome mould this really is.
He was sculpted as a Shire, but it would be extraordinarily rare to see any individual of that breed without any white markings - one or mayyyybe two dark legs and some shorter socks, yes, possibly even a star and snip in place of a blaze, but no white at all and that's no purebred Shire horse! So I had to get to work on finding a different breed for him.
A lot of the central-European draft breeds come with little or no white, but most of them are heavier set and lack the leg feathering this sculpt has, so I started to look a bit further afield, and happened across this picture - the North Swedish Draft. Lighter build with longer back? Bay with no white markings? Feathery legs? Long loose undocked tail? He's even got the little pale grey nose! Perfect! This means he's also the first model allocated this breed on my website, which is always fun - I love building up a catalogue of different breeds and types from across the world.

Here's that sweet grey nose again, he has a very kind and happy face. I looked up some names in Swedish and settled on Härskare, which means ruler or monarch, which seemed fitting as he arrived around the time we had the coronation of a new king!

The other side, showing the lovely flowing mane, and also the tiny mark by his shoulder which was why he sold for an affordable price - it's so small it didn't bother me, and this being the 'wrong' side anyway the damage won't show on display - I'll only ever see it when dusting him, and I very rarely get round to that task!

CollectA's 2023 horses

Last week I ordered most of the CollectA models with the early-2023 release date. I did leave out the Arabian foal on purpose, though - the shop I use (bigjigstoys.co.uk) does free postage over £40, so it'll help me make up another good size parcel if I leave one out now, and order the matching Arabian pair together when the stallion comes into stock later in the year. But all the rest of the Standard size range came to me in one lovely big parcel yesterday.

First, the Holstein stallion, in dark bay. He's well shaded but because it's such a dark variation of bay, it's harder to tell at first glance, though still an improvement on the initial CollectA paintjobs which had minimal shading over a bare coloured plastic. He also doesn't get eye colours, though that's something I'll come back to as we go through the rest of this year's horses!

The sculpt isn't quite so crisp or detailed as the majority of CollectA's horses. This stands out most in the lower legs, where the hooves seem rather small and a bit too upright in angle, and there's no sculpted definition for the tendons, or at the coronet - the division between the furry leg and the hard hoof is shown entirely with paint colour. His ears are also a bit on the chunky side, and there's a lack of musculature all over - if you compare him to any of the older CollectA moulds it's quite noticeable. Here's my Hanoverian, a similar German warmblood breed - worse painting, better sculpting :

The Holsteiner still isn't a bad model, though - the proportions are sound, the anatomy is fine, the expression's appealing. Even at their most blunted and lacking detail, CollectA are still miles ahead of Schleich in terms of that anatomical realism, so while this one might seem at first like a step towards Schleich levels of simplicity, he does still match the correct shape of a horse!

The second one out of the box is this Andalusian, one of the older sculpts, from CollectA's 2010s glory days of fine legs and perfect precision detailing!

Palomino is one of those colours which has only been accepted and recognised in the Andalusian breed in more recent years - they used to have a very strict stud book, only allowing bay, black, and grey. Chestnuts and many dilutes existed, but weren't allowed to be officially registered, unless they could be snuck in under the 'grey' option, which didn't require you to state the base colour the horse was before it started to change!

When I first got into model showing over twenty years ago, the hobby rule was that any Andalusian sculpt in a 'wrong' colour would just be shown as a Lusitano instead, and it's very hard for me to get that habit out of my head! To this day I often file any cream dilutes or chestnuts automatically into the Portuguese side of my Iberian model herd, and I think I'll do that again here, though there's nothing stopping anyone having a palomino Andalusian these days - don't take my decision as advice!

The paintwork here is interesting, as it's a bit more like the old way CollectAs were painted - the pale golden tone on the flanks is the solid bare plastic we're looking at, with a hint of darker shading across the body to give it some depth, which seems to also include the mane - the roots are definitely a richer deeper blond than the tips.

Next up, another unusual colour for the breed - a perlino Thoroughbred.

Perlino is what happens when a bay horse gets two cream genes, one from each parent - they double up, causing the colour to go even paler. Cream's very rare in the Thoroughbred breed. I've seen some very impressive lifesize portrait paintings of early imported ancestors which were palomino and buckskin (incorrectly called dun in those days), but the colour was bred out very early on and for the last few centuries the British thoroughbred has been exclusively bay, chestnut, grey, or black.

Flashy colours like palomino and sabino crop up mainly in Japan, and there's quite a thriving market for loud coloured offspring of loud coloured parents - whether or not they had much success on the track they're guaranteed a place at stud, and so the colour continues into the next generations.

I suspect this might be where CollectA got the inspiration for a Perlino Thoroughbred, as it certainly isn't the British, Irish and French racetracks I'm more familiar with, and it's a bit of an odd choice when they could've gone with a much more typical TB colour to broaden their range in a more likely way - we've seen this mare in black and bay, so how about a chestnut or a grey? Too boring, perhaps!

Personally, I'm going to show mine as a Kinsky Horse, a relative of the Czech Warmblood. A lot of Thoroughbred blood was used in the development of the breed (one of their early names was 'half-bred', a TB stallion bred to a local mare) so they tend to be finer and lighter than some of the older warmblood breeds, and a Thoroughbred mould in a cream dilute colour works just fine.

Here she is with a bit more sunlight. Although I have my reservations about the colour choice, it's certainly a nicely done perlino, with the shade not too brassy or too pink, and the mane and tail darker. The pinking of the skin is also done in a pleasant and subtle way.

 
And she has a blue eye, look! Essential for the realism of the colour, and neatly painted in, I was very pleased to see this one did get the added level of detailing for the eyes.

The new-look Clydesdale with his wild sabino makeover was one of the best repaints on offer this year, and in person it's just as impressive! It's a shame they didn't add any variation in the black, as it's very solid monotone - there could've been a bit of depth if they'd added just a hint of grey-brown for the flanks and face, but I think he gets away with it as the markings are so eye-catching and contrast so well. Rather than spraying or stencilling the patches this time, they've gone with a sort of wrap-around decal application, little bits of white stuff carefully applied to each model by hand. There's potential for slight variation between individuals, depending on how accurately each piece was laid on, but the markings themselves will be the same template for every horse - like we saw on the Paint Horse last year.

You can see a tiny flaw in the marking application on the hind leg this side, there's a bit of white where there shouldn't be, but it's very minor, and I can easily dot a bit of black paint over it when I remember. On the whole, I do prefer this way of adding markings without leaving it up to the factory artists to hand-paint, when the results can vary wildly depending on the care they take and the time they're given, or using a stencil to spray through, which inevitably leaves a blurry edge.

I think this is the nicest of the colours they've released on this mould so far, and of course it is a very beautiful and dynamic sculpt, with a great action pose and all that flying hair! Again, as a dark-eyed colour, there's no brown painted in for the eyes, they're a glossy black instead.

The foal gets a makeover to match his father, and again the markings are crisp and sharp, though he doesn't have any white on the body, which is a bit of a shame - perhaps it's too fiddly to apply to a smaller mould, though even a tiny patch either side would've been better than nothing! He does have that hint of brown in the paint, though, which is a nice touch, especially as black foals are born pale, go through this dark chocolatey stage later in their first summer, then don't turn fully black til they grow their next coat. So while CollectA missed the 'baby coat' stage which is a sort of mushroomy grey-brown, they did still remember not to give a foal an adult colour.

Here they are side by side. I admit it matters less whether an adult-and-baby pair have good co-operative poses when it's a stallion rather than a mare, as they wouldn't be turned out together in the field, but I still like to take a family picture or two!

Now, the silver grulla Morgan stallion. This one sadly doesn't quite live up to his catalogue photo, as the dappling isn't so soft or subtle as we were promised. Last year's dappled grey Hanoverian was brilliant in that respect, so I'd got my hopes up for this 2023 release, but it's not quite there. In the promo pic, the dappling continued up the neck and faded out gradually, where on the actual production models, it reaches the shoulder and then...just stops.

The fade-out of dappled into the flanks and on the quarters is just fine, so I'm not sure why they couldn't have done something similar at the front end and had them carry on up the neck. I think there is a slight difference in the paint thickness for the final row of dapples before they stop, as they don't look so defined as the central ones - kind of like the ones on the hindquarters, they're there and still have the sharp edge, but not so starkly pale as the shoulder area. I'd be tempted to blend the brightest ones in with a bit of my own paint to tone them down, only then the model wouldn't be Original Finish any more and I'd struggle to file him properly on my collection website.

Another angle - he's got a very handsome head, the leg shading is lovely, and I like the face markings a lot. His eye, though, isn't coloured.
Looking back to last year, any CollectA horses treated to the new modern paintjobs (the Arabian mare, Hanoverian, Paint Horse) had their eye colour painted in, with a hint of gold in the brown, a black pupil, and an eye-white too. But this year, the only models which have eye colours are those with blue eyes! I wonder if they were just a bit too time-consuming for the production line and whoever's designing was asked to leave out that level of detail this time round, unless it really had to be there for a blue eyed colour!

Here he is again, in the shade, which doesn't make quite such a pretty photo but does help illustrate how the dapples are less 'spotty' in some places than others. Again, this might be individual variation, I like mine better than the other in-hand example I've seen so far (which was in the US, so possibly a different production batch than was shipped to the UK?) but can't promise that all this batch have the same application of dapple layer!

I've saved my favourite til last, here is the Mustang mare in a wonderful splash pinto colour! 

The edges of the markings follow such a realistic line, it's great. Splash is one of the hardest pinto types to do really well, as it seems less logical than the much more common tobiano and overo patterns which we get used to seeing, understanding, and speaking as a model painter myself, being able to invent in a believable way!

Splash seems to defy all logic, so you can't easily predict the likely outlines and placements of markings, but you can tell when it looks wrong - so many times a custom-painted splash pinto will look like the paint splashes the pattern takes it's name from, but CollectA have avoided that and hit the nail on the head here. One of their very best designs!

This is one of my favourite CollectA sculpts, a mustang which looks true to the breed without being overly dramatic. Yes, mustangs can fight, and yes, they can rear, and yes, they probably do both those things a little more often than the average domestic horse - but they don't have to be sculpted looking fierce or standing on their back legs every single time. I love that this mare's just trotting along minding her own business, doing horse things, and not in a temper about it!

Her colour is officially given as bay, but there's a sort of light and sandy tone to it which reminds me of a sooty buckskin, so I think I'll be crediting her as a slightly different coat colour when I come to catalogue her on my collection website.

Because the white face marking includes the eyes, they're blue (hurrah for eye colour!)

That's the majority of this year's CollectA horses covered in one big review this time! As I said, there's the Arabian foal out already, the Arabian stallion to follow later in the year, along with the Boulonnais, and I'm far too addicted to CollectAs not to want every breed for my collection as they're released, so I'll be reviewing them here on my blog in due course. 

Breyer 2023 regular runs reviewed

The 2023 regular runs are officially revealed!

The photos actually surfaced on some model horsey blogs (and probably Facebook, but I don't look there) a few days ago, but that was just screenshots from an online dealer catalogue which was swiftly password protected once they realised normal collectors were viewing it too!
So I've waited a couple of days til Breyer put the releases up on their own site, now you can click through the linked names to see the full size pictures from several angles, the real horses behind the models, and text descriptions too.

Traditional 

The Ideal Series Appaloosa

The Orren Mixer 'Ideal' series, using the same mould in a series of different colours, carries on from the Quarter Horse and Paint Horse to feature the Appaloosa. The colour's nice enough, and I think people who've been collecting all of these will be really happy with this new one being so flashy and detailed, but I'm still not a fan of the mould so I'll be giving it a miss.

Sweetwater's Zorah Belle

A fjord! A FJORD.
I'm so glad they're letting this mould through to the regular run range so quickly, and that they've done it in a really nice typical shade of dun for the breed. I'd hoped they were saving yellow dun for the first regular run when the first ever release for the Premier Club members was a blue dun instead, but it's just really nice to see they're letting us have such a nice model as a regular run.
I suspect this one will be incredibly popular with collectors, and with the supply issues we've had in the UK for the last few years, it might end up rather hard to get hold of just by hoping to catch one in stock before they've all gone, so I'll definitely be putting her on pre-order as soon as any of my usual stockists have them available to reserve in advance like that. I neeeed this fjord.

ATP Power

This one's a portrait model of a horse whose rider starred in a Netflix documentary film. I don't do Netflix so I've never heard of them, but it's interesting to see them picking a horse who's famous for a reason other than being a show/competition champion, famous stud sire, or racing star. It's a nice action mould, and the horse has got enough white markings to not have the plain-semigloss-black-all-over effect of Breyer's usual jet black paintjobs.

Ebony Shines and Charlize

A mare and foal set, and another first-time appearance for new moulds as a regular run release. I especially like how the mare looks very calm and placid, just standing there, while her foal is more lively - they'd make lots of sweet photo poses together. The colour is nicely done, too, it looks like there's a hint of metallic shine but nothing over the top toward being too golden, this is more subtle and realistic. The mare's also got a great quirky nose marking, and if you scroll to the last photo you can see the real one has that too. This set's going on my wishlist as well.

RD Marciea Bey

Yet again, the first time this sculpt has been a regular run. Not my preferred kind of Arabian, with the long snakey outline, even longer legs, and showring stance, definitely one mould I'll be avoiding no matter what colour they ever do it in, but equally I can see it being pretty popular with people who do enjoy this type. The Peter Stone Arabian has been much-loved and very successful showing, even though I hate it and will never buy one, this new mould is like Breyer's version of the Stone Arabian and likely to divide opinion in a similar way!

Classic

Blue roan Brabant

I rather like this one! It's still oddly lacking in muscle for a draft breed, but looks much better in this colour than the bland bay we had last time round.

Red dun pintaloosa

Not so keen on the marking design here - the appaloosa blanket pattern is fine but the pinto flash on the shoulder is a bit blobby and blunt, and the blurred markings on the legs don't match with it, which gives the paintjob a disjointed and amateurish look - not a fan.

Fleabitten grey Thoroughbred

Quite pretty, one of the more elegant moulds and the colouring's done well with just enough face shading and speckles to be interesting.

Palomino Saddlebred

The first time this mould has been back in a real horse colour (rather than bright fantasy/decorator patterns) since it was first sold as the yearly limited edition. And the colour does really suit it, helped along by the fact it has no white socks, so there's none of that unsightly/lazy blurring to spoil the paintjob - I'll be getting this one.

Mahogany bay Arabian

Another one for my wishlist, I have this mould in chestnut (after being dubious about the mane and tail for years, I gave in when I saw a bargain one, hah) and will enjoy having it in bay as well. Plenty of shading, and a nice shade of brown paint too - not too wishy-washy like some, nice and rich. There are blurred socks, but not too bad - they go fairly briskly from black to white, rather than fading out down the leg.

Pinto

I can't quite tell whether this is a black pinto with some light reflecting weirdly from whatever surface they photographed it on, or whether it really is a dark brown colour. The mould is a Morgan, which don't come in tobiano pinto anyway, so that doesn't help! But you can see here how they've included the leg markings as part of the crisp masking process, so the colour pattern looks united as a whole, rather than having the body markings crisp and the legs blurred, like the pintaloosa I was complaining about before.

Western horse and rider

A pretty colour horse, the pale shade of buckskin known as buttermilk, but the set will be expensive cos of the rider and tack, so not one I'd consider getting. Notice also how Breyer riders' heads are a different scale to their bodies or their horses!

Effortless Grace horse and foal set

I like the foal sculpt more than the adult horse in this set, but luckily I don't like this colour design on either of them, so I won't be torn about wanting one and not the other!

Wild and Free horse and foal set

The rearing mustang is one of the nicest new sculpts for the Classics scale, in a good colour here, and the foal is sweet in that playful pose too. This one's a maybe for me but I haven't got round to buying the roan or pinto mustangs either yet, I'm still not really convinced whether I collect this scale or would rather save up and have more Traditionals and Stablemates instead!

Talking of Stablemates, here's the next scale...

Poetry In Motion set

A set of four, and as usual there's some colours I'm keener on than others! The roan is gorgeous, the dunskin is usual and nicely done, the grey is ok if you take the blotches as heavy Tetrarch/Chubari spotting rather than the dapples they're supposed to be, and the black one is boring with no shading and very blurred legs. I'll get the set, but mainly for the first two.

We also have a new batch of individual Stablemates, packaged on cards with different item numbers, so you can just pick up or order the one you want rather than taking pot luck with blind bags - hurrah!
Hopefully these will be easier to buy in the UK than the last lot, which proved very elusive - they sold out quickly, and rarely got restocked, so you were very lucky to catch them anywhere, especially the rarer moulds.

Now for some reason the single Stablemates aren't on the Breyer site yet, even though the photos have been released to retailers, so we'll swap to a random shop links for these (other stockists are equally good, I'm not advertising, just picked one which has them up already)

Appaloosa

This one's quite similar to a chestnut roan they did on the mould once before, but with spots rather than speckles! The spotting is done pretty well, if the production models are all copied accurately from a master pattern then they'll be nice, not too regular in size and spacing

Arabian

The 'Darley' mould as a single model for the first time, so a good way to buy them for customising rather than only being able to get one as part of larger set. 

Missouri Fox Trotter

Nice to see the MFT for the first time outside a blind bag, the colour suits it and it's a mould I like much more at this tiny scale than the original big one.

Pinto

The Rearing Andalusian but not in a colour any pure Iberian breed can be, so he'd make a good Spanish Mustang instead.

Quarter Horse

This one's lovely, chestnut might be a very ordinary colour but the shading here is very effective and suits the mould very well. This mould hasn't been sold outside those 70th Anniversary blind bags before, either.

Shire

And finally, a new addition to the regular run range - we had the braided, docked-tail version of this mould in the 70th Anniversary blind bags, but we've never had the loose-maned, full-tailed version. The colour's great, with a lot of shading done by varying the thickness of application for the brown paint.

There are a few other things : colourful decorators at all three scales, ornaments, and some more kiddie-orientated cartoony horses with brushable manes. They're not the kind of model I collect so I've not bothered to include them, but they're all here if you'd like a look.